Processing of video data often includes receiving a stream of video data and rendering for presentation on a display device. The video data includes video frames and/or video fields. Typically, video frames are generated for presentation on composite display devices, such as cathode ray tube (CRT) monitors, high definition (HD) televisions, and/or liquid crystal display (LCD) panels, while video fields are typically presented on interlaced devices such as traditional television sets. A video coder may compress the video data before storage or transmission.
To display or further process the video data, the video data (also referred to as image data, image data bit stream, digital video, or video data stream) may be processed by a variety of devices including a video decoder. The video decoder may process (e.g., decompress) video data compressed in accordance with a standard, such as H.264, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, VC-1, and the like. For example, the MPEG-2 standard prescribes an architecture for an MPEG-2 video decoder including aspects such as a variable length decoding section, an inverse quantization section, an inverse discrete cosine transform section, a motion prediction section, and memory. Likewise, the Blue Ray disc format prescribes, among other standards, H.264 for video compression of high definition (HD) video stored on the Blue Ray disc, and prescribes H.264 for the decompression of any video played back from that disc. When the video decoder includes coding mechanisms (e.g., a compression section to compress uncompressed video data), the video decoder is referred to as a video coder-decoder (or codec).
The implementation of any video decoder architecture is complex and thus costly. Moreover, the complex processing requires additional memory to process the video data and requires additional bandwidth to handle the complex processing—further increasing the cost of implementing the video decoder and its associated memory.